Do 5 Things a Day to Promote Your Books Is Step 4 of 7 in Creating a Sustainable, Income-Generating Author Life You Love

One of the first mantras of book promotion I heard when I started as a publisher almost three decades ago is still the hands-down best advice

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THIS CHANGES THE GAME FOR YOU.

Do five things a day, every day. It was one of the first mantras of book promotion I heard in my first years as a publisher, learning the business from publishers of all sizes and stripes on the 800-member pub-forum internet discussion list in the mid-1990s. And I’m not sure I’ve heard or seen anything simpler, as flexible and customizable, and effective since. It came from John Kremer, author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Book. The book’s sixth and last edition came out sixteen years ago in 2006, and it’s probably still worth the $35 price tag for what you will learn about how to think about book marketing from reading it. Those one thousand ideas still have tremendous value too.

Years before there was James Clear’s Atomic Habits and before we all heard of Jerry Seinfeld’s practice, Don’t Break the Chain, there was this basic nugget of book promotion from a master. We practiced an amped up version of it as a publishing company and did everything we could to pass on its wisdom to the authors we worked with. Very few took it to heart — at least literally — but I think we did a reasonable job of instilling the spirit of the message in many if not all. The creativity, variety, and consistency of our collective publisher-author book marketing and sales work became the hallmark of my first company’s 25-year run.